Two rock tracks with very different stories but the same conviction. One written in a South Carolina basement in 2002 and finally seeing the light, one originally composed in Italy during the 1991 Gulf crisis and still devastatingly relevant today.
Den Edie – Wide Open
Den Edie’s Wide Open is a Generation X DIY rock track that spent 24 years waiting to be heard, and sounds like it was meant for right now.
Wide Open has one of the more extraordinary origin stories you will come across this week. Written in 2002 in the aftermath of Den Edie’s former band dissolving, recorded on a Korg 1600 digital recorder, the track sat untouched for 15 years before Den rediscovered it in 2017 and began the long process of finally releasing it properly. Now it is the lead single for his fourth studio LP, and it sounds completely alive on its feet.
Dynamic changes, energetic beat and peculiar, memorable lyrics, this is the kind of rock song that does not come from calculation. Den Edie is a Summerville, South Carolina artist who embodies the DIY punk ethos of his Generation X roots. He cut his teeth with punk band VEIN and has evolved into a multifaceted songwriter who handles guitars, bass and vocals himself. New music that sounds like old music, as he describes it, is the highest compliment we can give.
Fiori del Male – Allarme rosso nel golfo persico
Fiori del Male’s Allarme rosso nel golfo persico is a 1991 Italian punk-metal track about the Gulf War that sounds like it could have been written today
Allarme rosso nel golfo persico, Red Alert in the Persian Gulf, was originally composed in 1991 as an urgent artistic response to the Gulf crisis, written quickly as global tensions reached boiling point. Now newly produced and released on all digital platforms, it lands with full force and devastating contemporary relevance. The human consequences of conflict, Fiori del Male remind us, remain tragically unchanged across the decades, and the track carries real weight as a political document.
Fiori del Male are a politically charged rock act from Rome with roots stretching back to the early 1990s, combining raw emotional intensity with sharp social commentary, and refusing to let audiences look away from the world’s injustices or go about their evenings politely. More than three decades after their formation, they are still making music with the same fierce conviction. Truly urgent art never loses its relevance is their philosophy, and tracks like this one prove it conclusively. It’s great.